Team Funbridge at the Prague Winter Games
🤫 Psst! This article will be updated regularly throughout the competition so that you can follow Team Funbridge’s progress from day to day. So make sure you check back from time to time!
A second edition for Team Funbridge
Take part in the special “Team Funbridge in Prague” tournament!
A second edition for Team Funbridge
As the first event of the year, Funbridge is sending its team to participate in the Winter Games for the second time running. You can access all the 2024 articles from Team Funbridge by clicking on this link.
Picture by Annie from Pixabay
This time, the Winter Games are being held in Prague from 14 to 20 February.
Prague is the capital of the Czech Republic and a city full of charm where history and modernity blend perfectly.
Between the Castle, the Charles Bridge and the narrow cobbled streets, every corner has its own unique atmosphere. The Vltava river runs through the city, offering lovely walks by the water.
The atmosphere is great, with its cosy cafés, legendary beer and lively evenings. 🍻
The Winter Transnational Championships adopt a traditional format, starting with a two-day round-robin qualifying stage. To advance to the knockout finals, you need to be among the top 32 teams.
At the same time, a second competition, the Étincelles Bam Trophy, will take over after the round robin for the eliminated teams. As the tournament progresses, it will also include the teams eliminated in the knockout stages.
Last year, it was the Zimmermann team that triumphed in the main event. Its members (Filipowicz, Helness, Helgemo, Multon, Martens and Zimmermann) were crowned European Champions.
Team Funbridge is back!
Here are the members who will be defending Funbridge’s colours at the competition this year:
Andrea Nilsson aka
ANDREW
Federica Dalpozzo aka
CHICCA
Sofie Graesholt Sjødal aka
SOFIE
Our three players will form a team of five with two Juniors who have played for the Dutch national team, Sibrand Van Oosten and Stefan Thorpe.
Day 1: Arrival
We have arrived in Prague for the Winter Games. Sofie played the Bundesliga in Germany last weekend, so she was already in Germany and met up with Sibrand on the train to Prague. Steff was coming from the other direction on a train from Vienna.
They all arrived early enough to do some sightseeing. So, they went out for dinner and then walked around town for a couple of hours. A great relaxed start to the tournament. Just what we needed after a bit of a stressful start.
Unfortunately, Andrea couldn’t make it and we preferred to be five players so we could have some breaks to make sure we play our best. We therefore tried to call some of our friends, and luckily Benjamin Zabradi is sporty and said yes to coming at very short notice. The team now consists of Sofie and Federica from Team Funbridge and is filled up with Sibrand Van Oosten, Stefan Thorpe and Benjamin Zabradi.
Day 2: A difficult start
Sofie: The first day of the championship was not a great start for us. We unfortunately had too many doubled contracts, both of us going down while our opponents made. Luckily we also had some high scores doubled, but unfortunately not that many. We started against a strong team with several Italian professionals, so we played the first match on Vugraph. It was not a good start for us and we lost by 32 IMPs. We also lost the second match, but not by as much as we played a close match, losing by 6.
Then we had a lunch break and got to recharge with some good food. That was perfect for us because we won the next match by 14 IMPs. The fourth match was a crazy one. In 10 boards we and our opponents had a total of 72 IMPs, i.e. an average of 7.2 IMPs per board. However, the match ended in a draw 36-36. The last match was not a great one either, but we will now recharge our batteries again with some good food, this time pizza, and get ready to play some good bridge tomorrow.
Ella, new member of Team Funbridge, plays in the Danish junior team!
Day 3: KO matches begin
After two days of qualifying, these members of the team were able to advance to the next stage, the round of 32, each with their own team: Nicolai, Christian, Léo, Andreas, Ronald and Margaux.
Photo of the France Junior team with Thomas, Romaric, Margaux, Luc, Louis and Romain.
A deal played by Romaric and Margaux:
The opponents play in 3♥, bid by West. When I redoubled, I showed a big doubleton honour in spades, and even more so with a passed hand, which allowed Romaric to lead a small spade. I won with the ace and played the queen, watching for Romaric’s suit-preference signal. Indeed, you need to know what to return so that he can cash the king of spades.
Roro thought that he needed the queen of clubs for the contract to go down, so he put the 3 on my queen. Now I was able to play a club, and we took three spades, one club and one diamond for 3♥ -1.
In the afternoon, we went to visit Prague while our partners finished qualifying.
We walked up to see the city from above.
It was great fun, despite a few slips and a hot chocolate accident.
Day 3 and 4: Playing BAM
Sofie: Since we didn’t qualify for the knockouts of the Winter Games, we started playing the BAM. It is a five-day tournament, with three days of qualifying, one day of semifinals and one day of finals, with teams from the knockouts dropping in each day.
We started really well and were leading after four boards! We were also in second place for most of the second session, but unfortunately we had a few bad boards in a row and quickly dropped down the rankings. However, we started picking it up again at the beginning of the third set. At the end of the day we were 8th with 57 points (9 above the average) after a great last set. We are happy with the results, even if there are still things to improve for later.
Sofie had an interesting board with Stefan in the second set. The bidding went as follows:
The lead was the 6 of hearts (4th best) to my king. Now I had a lot of tricks, but I also had some communication problems, so I started by playing on the diamonds, which East won on the first trick, and played another heart. Then I started to play on the clubs so that I could discard my spades in dummy. I played a club to the king and West won. He played a spade back and we ended up in this situation:
Now we had three club tricks, five diamond tricks, one heart and one spade, even tricks left over. However, there was an issue: we had communication problems. If I won the ace of spades and played the club to the king, I would never get back to my hand. I also had the option of taking the spade finesse and if that worked, I could discard my third spade on the heart. But there was a better solution. So, in the end, I took the ace of spades and the queen of hearts and discarded my high king of clubs! Now I no longer had any communication problem because I could cash the jack and 10 of clubs, discard the last two spades and play a diamond to the dummy for the rest of the tricks. This gave us a winning board as our team-mates found the spade lead, so they could not get more than ten tricks. This overtrick is very important in BAM, where winning the board is the only thing that matters.
In the evenings we have a great time hanging out with the team and other juniors who are here. There are lots of things to do in Prague, but after seeing the city on the day we arrived, yesterday we spent our time with a height contest, some very happy with the results and others visibly disappointed.
Day 4: A good day
Sofie: Today was a very good day. The first and last sets were both very good and since we had a decent day yesterday, we are currently ranked 2nd.
It is a lot of fun in a strong field. We hope to continue tomorrow, but our main goal is to qualify for Semifinals A.
Day 5: Team Funbridge qualifies for the final A of the BAM
Sofie : After a very good qualifying stage it was time for the semifinals of the BAM. We played just above average in the first two sessions and were ranked 10th going into the last set. We needed to be in the top 14 to be certain of qualifying, but the top 16 would mean we still had a chance, depending on what the losers of the semifinals in the Teams category decided to do. We assumed that we needed to be about average to make it, but as good as possible would be great as we wanted to be sure of qualifying.
The first round of the set was good with a win and a tie, then the second round had a 2 and a 0, and the third one was not so good with only 1 out of 4 points. So we were now back to average for the set.
The next round was a 2.0, then a 0.2 and a 2.0, and this kept going all the way through. We ended up exactly at average for the last session, in 13th place, and made it to the final. Tomorrow is the final of the BAM and we are really looking forward to playing it!
Day 6: The final day
Federica: Today we started to play early, at 9am for the Final A, which we deserved for our good qualification. I played the first set with Sofie and Stef with Sib. We didn’t play very well, and this added a bit of bad luck, which put us at the bottom of the table.
We were playing against Team Alpert.
I received the spade lead, I started thinking and I thought the best way was to try to make 9 tricks by ruffing some cards. So I put the king and made the trick. I played the ace of clubs, then club ruffed, king of diamonds, the opponent put the ace and I ruffed. So I played again the club ruffed and saw the king of clubs. Now I thought that if I played a heart, I could better manage the play because I had a stop in all the suits. I played a heart to the king because I knew that the ace was on my left, but I wasn’t sure about the queen and I couldn’t play a heart again unless they played a diamond. I made the trick and played a heart again taken on my left. She didn’t play a spade but a diamond, so I took and played a diamond ruffed, heart ruffed and diamond ruffed again for 10 tricks. When we went out, I talked to Giovanni Donati. He played the same as I did, whereas Alfredo said he might have played a heart directly… Who knows which was the best line of play? How would you have played?
The second one was 15 boards again and we tried to change pairs: I played with Stef and Ben with Sib, but the result was not good.
At least Sofie bought some food because on the last day they decided to have only two 30-minute breaks between the three sessions. I sat out the last one and followed them from the site, but we couldn’t move up the rankings anymore. I think maybe we were all a bit tired because of the format and of course in Final A, the level is the best, so it’s also difficult not to be nervous against the best players in the world.
Anyway, it’s always nice to play a final and we were very happy to reach it. I also think that switching partners every round or so allows the spirit of Funbridge to continue because we have been playing with different partners since the first times, and it allows us to enjoy the tournament and learn a lot.
Nicolai: Hi, I’m Nicolai from Team Funbridge. I played in the De Botton team here in Prague, and after a very disappointing loss in the quarter finals, we ended up winning the bronze medal in the BAM, so we are very happy with that!
The winners of the main event: once again Team Zimmermann
with a final swing match!
Cheer on Team Funbridge at the Winter Games!
Express your support in comments 😄
allez ce n’est que partie remise!!
Go Team Funbridge!
Go team Funbridge…☘️
Good Luck in The final tomorrow
Com gratulations